


Emotion Sickness

by fancypineapple



Category: UP10TION
Genre: Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6613963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancypineapple/pseuds/fancypineapple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone gets terribly worried when Dongyeol starts vomiting flowers.<br/>Dongyeol himself doesn't think it's such a big deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Emotion Sickness

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i myself vomited this fic out in 18h so forgive me if it isn't my best  
> 2\. this fic is d-dedicated to ayumi, the hwanxiao promoter, and lin, the hanahakibyou hater

When Dongyeol starts complaining of nausea, none of the others think much of it.

“Take a break,” their dance instructor orders, barely turning to look at him. “And stop eating junk food. Gyujin, during this step…”

The only person who seems worried at all is Sooil, who keeps stealing glances at where Dongyeol sits for the rest of the performance. At the next water break, several go-overs later, he slides on the wooden floor to land by Dongyeol’s side. “You’re super pale,” he says, sounding as worried as he probably looks; Dongyeol can’t see him right now, as he has shut his eyes closed. “You’re, like, grey. And your lips are blue. Shouldn’t we take you back to the dorm?”

“Uh, yeah. Maybe.” Dongyeol cracks his eyes open. Some of his bandmates are stealing worried glances at him. Their dance teacher is outright staring at him, hands on his hips. The scenery sways. “Wait—wait, I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He barely makes it to the nearest restroom in time, leaving it to Sooil to close the cubicle door after him as he hurls into the nearest open toilet, throat spasming violently as he felt something stuck in his esophagus. By the time Dongyeol finally starts ejecting the contents of his stomach, coughing and letting out a couple of rogue burps, half of the group is standing behind him, whispering to each other in hushed conversations.

Dongyeol intends to turn around to tranquilize them with a joke, but, when he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, he feels something foreign on his chin.

He picks whatever it is with the tip of his fingers – and finds himself staring at a plum flower petal.

The whispers die down. For an entire minute, Dongyeol just stares at the petal, frowning deeply, trying to think through the haze of the nausea. Instinct makes he take a peek inside of the toilet. And well enough, inside, staining the white porcelain, he finds thousands and thousands of pink petals floating in the water, as well as a whole, almost intact branch lying pathetically above the rest.

Dongyeol’s first thought is, _how did all that fit in my stomach?_

Dongyeol’s second thought is the one he voices:

“I wonder if I can flush that.”

 

 

 

Of course, he’s taken to the hospital almost immediately. Jinwook, Sooil and Wooseok tag along, as well as their manager, and Dongyeol sincerely wonders what’s the use of that. Considering that he has just vomited a bunch of flowers, which is not considered normal anywhere in the world, it’s very clear that’s something quite wrong with him; will people being there change the diagnose? Probably not. So why the crowd?

Though, Dongyeol reasons with himself, if he saw a bandmate throw up flowers, he’d probably be curious to know what’s going on with them as well. So he’d probably tag along. Well, in the end, maybe he should stop thinking about that and pay attention to what the doctor is saying.

“… a period of dormancy for the Hanahaki Syndrome, which is of about two to five years, during which the virus either dies down, or acts upon the appearance of unrequited romantic feelings,” is what the doctor is saying. The actual name of this disease is stupidly long, but Dongyeol quite likes the sound of ‘hanahaki’. Sounds like a made-up word. Well, it probably _is_ a made-up word, in a sense… “The known symptoms are as shown. Bouts of nausea, vomiting petals, occasional coughing… some patients may experience acidic reflux and stomach pains, as well as petals in the feces.” Oh, sweet, so he can literally poop flowers now.

“Xiao-yah,” their manager calls him, frowning in a worried manner. “Do you remember being around any infected individuals?”

Dongyeol blinks. “No… actually, I didn’t know this syndrome existed until now.” He turns to stare at the doctor.

“It’s coming in contact with vomited flowers from infected individuals that causes the contamination,” the doctor specifies, glancing back and forth between Dongyeol and the manager. “As for example, picking up a vomited petal, or accidentally eating something with a petal in it. But because there’s a long dormancy period, it could’ve been either yesterday or several years ago, so…”

Dongyeol purses his lips, feeling a little guilty. Did he ever pick up a slightly suspicious-looking flower petal in the last five years? Well… he might have? He doesn’t know.

“Is there a cure?” Jinwook speaks up all of the sudden, startling Dongyeol a little. “Or a treatment, or anything else?”

“The safest, easiest way to cure this disease is to get the… ‘cause’ of the disease, as to say, to love the patient back.” There’s a hint of embarrassment in how the doctor says that.

“Apart from that?” Their manager asks dryly.

“Apart from that… there have been cases of cure through lobotomy around the world, but it’s not legalized in Korea.” He shoots a glance full of meaning to Jinwook. “Of course, being idols, you could travel him to Japan, China, or Canada, where the practice is legal – but I must warn you, it’s an extremely invasive procedure, and it can interfere with most brain functions. The bare minimum side effect to this surgery is that the person loses all feelings of love towards the said ‘cause’.”

“So the person drops their unrequited feelings,” Jinwook considers, in deep thought. He turns to Dongyeol. “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

“You’re kidding right,” Dongyeol laughs it off. The doctor and his manager, though, are frowning with concern. “Look… if this is a vomiting disease, can’t I just treat it with nausea medicine?”

All eyes turn to the doctor. “Yes,” he says. “And stomach medicine. Basically, you can treat the symptoms without addressing the cause. But—”

“So I guess I’ll have to do that.” He shrugs.

“It’s a chronic disease,” the doctor emphasizes. His frown is exceeding the normal levels of frowning, Dongyeol thinks. There’s about ten folds in his forehead as of now. “You’ll have to take medicine for it for the rest of your life, and chronic use of medicine has its own side-effects as well. By the time you reach forty, you’ll probably be taking several pills a day.”

“That’s not that uncommon these days. Doesn’t noona take meds as well?” Dongyeol turns to their manager, who just nods. “It’s okay. It’s better than lobotomy, right? I’ll manage.”

No one in the room is parting of his light-heartedness. He doesn’t care.

The trip back to the dorm is a silent one.

 

 

  
Everyone is informed that same night, as Dongyeol sleeps a peaceful, dreamless medicine-induced sleep. When he wakes up, he’s glad that that _thing_ manager-noona gave him isn’t supposed to be his regular one. He feels like someone knocked him out with a hammer. Also, he’s about ten times more nauseous than before.

“Morning,” a voice greets him, and he’s glad he could recognize that voice anywhere, because his vision is very blurry. “Are you feeling better?”

Instead of answering, Dongyeol raises a finger. Then, he waddles to the bathroom, and throws up for almost three minutes straight.

Jesus, that is a lot of petals.

Once he’s done and has brushed his teeth – the aftertaste of the flowers is oddly sour – he waddles back to the room. Ah, now he can see Hwanhee clearly. He can also see that Hwanhee looks plenty worried, which is kinda bad.

“Morning,” he offers with a smile.

“Not feeling better, I presume.”

“Not much? It always feels better after I let it out though,” Dongyeol confesses. “I’m supposed to start on the meds today, so I’ll probably feel much better after that.”

Hwanhee still looks worried. He has a half-folded shirt in his hands, which he discards in the general direction of his bed before sitting by Dongyeol’s side on the floor. “Wooseok hyung told me about the disease.”

Dongyeol blinks. “Oh.”

There’s a brief moment of silence, during which Dongyeol contemplates what else should he say. Just as he’s decided, though, Changhyun bursts through the door, looking an awful lot bloated.

“Feeling better?” He asks Dongyeol, looking completely nonchalant. It’s a relief.

“Yeah,” Dongyeol smiles brightly. “Did the hyungs tell you as well?”

“About the disease? Sort of.” Changhyun joins them on the floor, sitting cross-legged across from Dongyeol. “I missed some details though. I was half-asleep. I think Gyujin didn’t catch most of it either—”

“I what?” As if summoned, Gyujin pops up at the doorway, looking quite bloated himself. “Oh, Yeollie. Feeling better?”

“ _Yeees_ ,” Dongyeol rolls his eyes, turning to Hwanhee to laugh with him. Hwanhee’s smile, however, is completely forced. “Sit down. Let me tell you about what I have.”

“Is it serious?” Gyujin frowns, jumping over Changhyun’s legs to sit by his side.

“Hm, not really. It’s incurable though.”

“… that sounds plenty serious, Dongyeol.”

“It’s not cancer or anything.” Shrug. “It’s just flowers. I just throw up a lot of flowers.”

“Flowers…” Gyujin frowns. Dongyeol feels like people have frowned around him an awful lot since the previous day. “That’s so weird. It doesn’t look like it’s a real disease.”

“But it is. It has a hella long name, and it’s caused by a virus which affects the brain,” Dongyeol recites matter-of-factly, like a kid who has memorized an important subject at school. “Ah, and you can become sick by touching the flowers, so stay away from my vomit.”

“You don’t need to tell me twice,” Changhyun deadpans.

“If it’s that simple to catch, I’m surprised it’s not more common,” Gyujin ponders, bringing his knees up to his chest. “I’ve never met anyone who has it until you. Isn’t that weird?”

Silence follows those words. Then, without warning, Hwanhee speaks up.

“Apparently, what really causes the illness is unrequited love,” is what he says, rather quietly.

Ah. Dongyeol had forgotten about that.

“Ah true, there’s that. Anyone can catch the virus, but you don’t really get sick until you feel unrequited love,” Dongyeol adds that to his very professional explanation.

Great. Now Changhyun is frowning too. Everyone is frowning. Dongyeol is growing tired of looking at frowns.

“Wait. Unrequited love?” Changhyun even straightens up at that. “You’re… in love with someone right now?”

Dongyeol blinks. “Yeah.”

“Seriously?” Gyujin now is no longer frowning, and has widened his eyes instead. There, much better. “Like, seriously? Who?”

“I’m not telling,” Dongyeol singsongs, getting to his feet. “I gotta ask noona about my meds now. Also, stop frowning, the three of you!” He shouts, already halfway outside of his room. “It’s not that serious!”

 

 

It’s not that serious, Dongyeol thinks to himself as he holds down the vomit later in the van.

It’s really not that serious, he thinks to himself as they sit through a meeting about their next comeback, and as he lightly walks on a treadmill while the others do muscle training.

But God, he thinks to himself as he gasps for air in front of the toilet, having thrown up an almost ten centimeters long branch on top of hundreds and hundreds of petals. _God_ , that’s so annoying.

 

  
The medicines start working after one week of regular use. Dongyeol stops swinging back and forth from perfectly fine to oh-god-I-just-rode-the-world’s-worst-rollercoaster-after-eating-a-whole-cake-by-myself, and, after the tenth day, the barfing turns into coughing one or two petals once in a while. He starts keeping those in a jar.

“You’re… collecting your own vomit,” Sungjoon points out. “In a jar.”

“It’s pretty!” Dongyeol cries.

“This is extremely dangerous, Dongyeol-sshi,” the doctor reprimands you on his very first post-medicine check-up. That’ll be a thing he’ll be doing regularly from then on. “You’re basically incubating a highly contagious virus in your home. It puts all of your bandmate’s health at risk. Please bring the jar to the clinic so we can discard it safely.”

After much pouting, Dongyeol lets go of his jar.

It’s really worth noting, though, that, despite UP10TION being right in the whirlwind of their comeback promotions, first week chaos and all an all, no fans seem to have caught up on the Dongyeol-has-a-chronic-disease thing. It’s really a thing to be proud of, that he has been looking well enough to hide his condition. All he needs to do is to take care not to cough up any petals while in public. If he ends up infecting a fan… how many years in hell would that be…?

“… Yeollie,” a voice calls in the distance. Dongyeol starts coming back to his senses, feeling some light patting on his face. When did he fall asleep? He open his eyes. “Your medicine. You have to take it before bed.”

It’s Yein. Dongyeol blinks once, twice, and can spot Wooseok peeking at him from behind Yein’s back. Yein himself is… not frowning, but…

“Right.” Fighting the bone-deep tiredness that’s slowing his body down, Dongyeol sits up. Ah, true, he ended up dozing off on Gyujin’s ‘bed’, so to speak. Where’s Gyujin? “Right. Medicine.”

Yein, of course, has his pills in one of his hands and a glass of water in the other. “Here.”

“Thanks, mom,” Dongyeol accepts the meds, smiling brightly. Yein smiles back, but it’s a tiny smile, and honestly, _this_ is the most annoying thing about having the disease. Suppressing a sigh, he takes the pills.

“The meds seem to be working well,” Wooseok remarks while crawling closer to him – literally crawling, which Dongyeol openly snickers about. Soon, Dongyeol is being sandwiched between his two older bandmates. “Haven’t heard you hurling lately.”

“Yeah! The throwing up sort of stopped. The coughing too,” Dongyeol confirms, nodding with extra enthusiasm. “Now I’m just… pooping a lot of flowers.”

Both Yein and Wooseok laugh heartily at that. Dongyeol smiles contently. They don’t need to know about the branches.

“That’s really good.” The pity in Yein’s smile is mostly, or totally, gone now. He pats Dongyeol’s head in his usual way. “Now go to sleep in your proper bed, okay? Or Gyujin will be angry at you.”

“Sure mom!”

Apparently satisfied, Yein gets to his feet, and sets off to the kitchen. Dongyeol presumes he’ll eat some late night junk food before heading to bed.

Wooseok is still sitting by his side.

“So…” he starts off quietly, and Dongyeol already has a bad feeling about this conversation.

“Hm?”

Wooseok hesitates. He seems to be chewing up his words. If he hesitated for a little longer, maybe Dongyeol could change the conversation’s route, but…

“You see, about your disease…” Yep, this is definitely down a bad lane. “It can be cured if the person you like starts liking you back, right?”

“That’s what the doctor said,” Dongyeol replies somewhat mechanically.

“And then there’s the brain surgery, but that’s not an option,” He continues. “So what I was thinking is… have you already confessed? To this person you like?”

And then he looks up to meet Dongyeol’s eye, somewhat expectantly.

The sheer absurd of the sentence Dongyeol bursts in laughter.

“Hyung—I’m sorry, it’s just,” he knows it was a bit rude to laugh to Wooseok’s face like that, but… “It’s just that… my situation with this person I like isn’t very…”

Wooseok waits. Dongyeol can’t put it into words. “Favorable?”

“Something like that.”

A pause. Wooseok chews on his lower lip thoughtfully. It’s a cute habit of his. “Well… of course I can’t know for sure, but wouldn’t confessing… raise your chances of making this person like you? Even if just a little?”

“If anything,” Dongyeol cuts him off as his smile starts to crack. “It would completely ruin my chances with them.”

 

 

Of course, he understands the sympathy. They’re his bandmates, his friends. They just want to help.

It might take them years to understand there’s no helping Dongyeol in the situation he’s in. There’s simply no way out.

But – honestly – it’s not that serious.

 

 

After a month of being on meds, at a fansign, Dongyeol coughs up a petal.

It’s just one petal, laying limp and slightly pathetically on the palm of his hand, but two things about this incident bother Dongyeol.

One, he hasn’t expelled a single petal through his mouth in a while. Two, he’s at a fansign, and now he has to discard this petal safely without anyone noticing.

For now, though, the next fan in line is coming, so he hides the petal in his pocket.

“You okay?” Comes the question from his left. Hwanhee. Dongyeol looks at him, and is relieved to find a merely curious expression. “What you looking around for?”

“Um, my pen?” Dongyeol lies a little dumbly. He knows his pen is behind his ear, so he’s expecting it when Hwanhee laughs at him.

“Idiot. No wonder you can’t find it,” he says, pulling the pen from behind Dongyeol’s ear and handing it to him. Dongyeol thinks he hears about ten thousand shutter sounds.

“No fighting, children,” Jinwook mock-scolds, hugging Dongyeol from behind, and there go another ten thousand shutter sounds. Then, Jinwook and Hwanhee have a silent funny face showdown, to which Dongyeol contributes very little, and a staff comes through to hurry Jinwook back to his seat.

Dongyeol focuses on smiling at the fan, on writing her name properly in the autograph, and on clowning around with Hwanhee and Yein for the rest of the event. The petal is for later.

 

  
“You’re nauseous, aren’t you.”

Dongyeol cringes.

“A little,” he confesses, making an apologetic face at Jinwook, who authored the question. The members who were getting into the vans halt on their tracks, and all eyes turn to him. “And I coughed up a petal earlier. But I already threw it away. I flushed it.” Dongyeol is responsible about his petals.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” If you squint and turn your head to the left a little, Sooil almost sounds angry.

“ _Because_ it’s just one petal, and I’m just a little nauseous,” Dongyeol retorts a bit snappishly. “It’s probably not even the flowers, it must be the food or something.”

He _hates_ the looks he’s getting right now.

“We did eat greasy food today,” Sungjoon points out matter-of-factly.

“And of course Yeol gobbled his portion down because he’s a savage,” Hwanhee adds, and some of them snicker. “It’s a wonder he’s just _a little_ nauseous. All these stomach meds are making him tough.”

In the end, most of them agree with Hwanhee’s and Sungjoon’s arguments, and they ride back home uneventfully.

However, in the middle of the night, when all of his bandmates are certainly dead asleep, Dongyeol wakes from his dream about donuts with a very familiar coldness down his esophagus.

Christ, not again.

But sure enough, there he is, kneeling in front of the toilet in the first floor bathroom, having his first vomiting bout in a month. It’s not one of his worst, but it tastes bitter on his tongue.

Well, on the good side: no branches. But he can’t help but notice that, while in the beginning he expelled exclusively pink plum flowers, this time, he can spot some white as well. Strange. It’s something he should tell the doctor on his next check-up.

He flushes the petals, brushes his teeth, and almost dies from a fulminant cardiac arrest when he exits the bathroom and finds Minsoo waiting for him at the doorway.

“ _Hyung!_ ” Dongyeol hisses, clutching at his chest as his knees go weak. “Holy shit, you almost killed me!”

“Sorry,” Minsoo mumbles, voice completely sleep-ridden. “Heard you. Need help?”

“No… I’m fine,” Dongyeol guarantees him, starting to recover from the fright. Now that he takes a good look at him, Minsoo’s face is almost comically bloated. Dongyeol feels bad for waking him up.

“Hm.” Minsoo nods, and, for a minute, both of them just stand there. It makes Dongyeol feel appreciative towards Minsoo’s way of dealing with things: he’s always straight to the point, and doesn’t fuss.

“Tea?” Well, _almost_ doesn’t fuss.

“Uh… sure.”

 

 

So, surprise surprise, turns out that Dongyeol is having a relapse.

“The meds just stopped working on you?” Gyujin is frowning again. Dongyeol can deal with Gyujin’s frowning, though, because he has cute eyebrows.

“Yeah. My body got resistant to them, or something?” Both of them are putting together a Lego spaceship Gyujin got from a fan. It’s not going as smoothly as it could be. “So the symptoms came back. And then Doctor Kwang gave me a stronger one.”

Gyujin makes a face. “Sounds bad.”

“Not really.” Dongyeol shrugs. “I got some emergency pills now too. They taste like cherry and stop the sickness in a couple of minutes. Pretty cool.”

A pause. “Dongyeol?”

Bad feeling.

“Hm?”

“Look,” Gyujin lowers his voice to a whisper. “Why don’t you tell me who’s the one you like? Just to me. I’ll pretend I don’t know.”

Dongyeol snorts. “You’re a shit liar though.”

“Am not!” Ah, there it is, Han Gyujin’s prized Angry Pout™. “I can keep this secret for you.”

Dongyeol is torn. On one side, he finds Gyujin’s act oddly touching. On the other…

“I’m not gonna tell you,” Dongyeol affirms, petulant. “It’s no big deal, and it won’t make a difference.”

“I can try to help?” Gyujin is very obviously getting desperate. “Like, give you tips to steal this person’s heart? Or something? I’m pretty sure my help is better than no help.”

Dongyeol gives Gyujin a good look. Ponders. Then, he sighs. “Okay,” is what he says next. “I’ll tell you.”

It’s like he lit the sun inside of Gyujin. “Really?”

“Really. Come here.” Dongyeol makes a come hither gesture with his finger, and Gyujin obeys immediately. “A little closer.” Even closer he comes.

Dongyeol eachs forward, puts his mouth close to his ear – and coughs loudly into his own hand.

“AAAAAAAAH!!” Gyujin screams as if he’s been set on fire, and Dongyeol rolls on the floor, laughing hysterically. “LEE DONGYEOL!!”

“What’s going on here?” Sooil sprouts from the kitchen.

“It’s—ah, it’s nothing,” Dongyeol manages to assure him mid-laughter. “I was just kidding, stop panicking! I coughed on my hand.”

“My God, you’re evil,” Gyunjin declares, still carefully touching the side of his head, as if expecting to find a petal there. “You really didn’t cough any on me, did you?”

“Nope,” Dongyeol singsongs, and Gyujin seems to calm down. There’s no petal in his hand either. “Just playing you a little.”

Han Gyujin’s prized Angry Pout™, round two. “You know, I really thought you were going to tell me. I mean,” he adds as Dongyeol rolls his eyes. “I seriously think I could help you! I think you’re being pessimistic about this.”

Oh? _He_ is being pessimistic?

“If I told you, you would understand why I don’t want to tell you.” He puts a final tone to it.

 

 

So he, Lee Dongyeol, is being pessimistic? That’s funny.

 _He_ isn’t the one pitying himself. _He_ isn’t the one acting like he’s gonna die if he spends another day sick.

It’s really, truly, honestly _not that fucking serious_.

 

 

The new meds work wonders on the nausea. Half a week in, and not a petal is coming out from his mouth. They do make him a lot sluggish though, like the doctor said they might, but that can be fixed with some vitamins and a little caffeine, so Dongyeol is doing pretty good.

“Your eyes are kinda red,” Sooil comments at practice on one of the first days.

 _How about you stop nitpicking my appearance for things to worry about?_ , Dongyeol wants to scream at him.

“Really? I’m feeling fine, though,” is what he says instead.

After the first couple of days, though, he has to admit he’s not feeling exactly at top shape. Because of the coffee, he sometimes feels like he’s not really in control of his body, and spaces out an awful lot during relatively simple tasks, like dancing or doing the dishes. It still beats the vomiting, but he’s pretty sure he should tell manager-noona about that. Just in case.

“Where’s noona?”

Most of the group is eating dinner at the kitchen when he asks that question. As for him, he has been searching for their beloved manager for the past minute.

“Visiting her parents,” Wooseok informs from his spot on the floor. He’s eating some noodles. “Why?”

“Just looking for her.” Dongyeol smiles.

“Hm.” Wooseok’s eyes meet his. Bad Feeling, Super Bad Feeling. “Are you okay?”

It hits Dongyeol harder than usually; maybe it’s the coffee’s fault? The fact is that he has to bite his lip real hard not to just snap at him. “Yes, hyung, I’m quite fine.”

“… are you sure?”

That’s it. Dongyeol is gonna lose it. “Honestly,” Dongyeol laughs a bitter laugh, “exactly what part of me looks not—fine—”

The answer comes shaped as blood trickling down his chin.

“I don’t know, maybe that part of you that’s bleeding through your mouth,” Wooseok retorts venomously, and Dongyeol winces. “Call a cab, Sungjoon.”

“Wait—”

“What’s going on?” Jinwook enters the scene.

“Dongyeol is spitting blood now,” Wooseok explains as he gets up. “We’re taking him to the hospital.”

“Look, seriously—”

“ _Look_ ,” Wooseok cuts him off firmly, and Dongyeol realizes, a little too late, that he’s gone and made Wooseok angry. Really angry. Wooseok doesn’t get angry easy, but, when he does, he really goes off. “I know you like to pretend you’re fine. I know you like to act like everything is okay and dandy and you don’t have an incurable chronic disease, and I _know_ you don’t want us to worry. But it’s _not_ fine. Look at yourself! What, you’re vomiting blood now and you want to act like this is okay?”

“I. Bit. My. Lip!!” Dongyeol doesn’t realize he’s shouting until he feels all his bandmates crowding around him. All eyes on him. He feels about to burst. “Won’t you listen to me?! This is not a symptom, I literally just bit my fucking lip! Stop being so fussy about everything, and stop trying to tell me how to feel, and STOP!! Pitying me!”

He’s even out of breath when he finishes talking. Wow. Saying those three lines was more tiring than vomiting an entire plum tree.

The silence in the kitchen is dead heavy. You could probably hear a pin dropping upstairs at the moment. But the stillness doesn’t last that long; as soon as the dust settles a little, Yein is by Dongyeol’s side.

“Let me—” He reaches for Dongyeol’s busted lip, but Dongyeol’s slaps his hand away immediately.

“I can handle myself, thank you,” he declares bitterly before storming out to the bathroom.

 

 

  
Dongyeol spends ten minutes in the bathroom crying silently, head between his knees, back against the cold wall.

It’s horrible. He feels horrible for screaming at Wooseok; feels horrible for being rude to Yein; and feel super horrible because, at each quiet sob, a whole plum flower at full bloom comes up his throat, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable. Always a white one. Dongyeol wishes the doctor had warned him about that.

At minute eleven of his sad times, though, Dongyeol quits crying to almost scream, because a pen comes flying through the bathroom window, hits the wall across him, and lands right by his left thigh. With a petal stuck in his throat and some snot threatening to drip from his nose, he studies the object carefully. Hm… that looks like an ordinary pen. It also feels like an ordinary pen, he adds as he picks it up. But then, how…?

A piece of paper slides through the bottom crack of the bathroom door, landing at Dongyeol’s feet.

He wonders if it’s all a very elaborated caffeine-induced hallucination.

 _hwanhee here_ , the paper says. _are u comin out anytime soon? if not, i threw u a pen. u can talk to me thru dis_.

Oh. Okay, that makes a bit of sense.

_how about u warn B4 u throw the pen mr genius_

_stfu. i didnt plan this ahead. obviously_

Dongyeol can’t help but smile at that.

_well u SHOULDA ;P_

_how were i supposd 2 kno u were gona sulk? lol  
btw, i kno u hate bein asked this, but: feelin better?_

Tears well up in his eyes again. But he won’t cry. He won’t.

 _ye. im ok. i feel bad for going off on hyung_. He finds himself being sincere before he can stop himself. It has always been like that with Hwanhee. _i get it that yall worried bout me. its just a lil 2 much sometimes_.

_ye i get it. i could tell u didnt want us to get fussy from the start. i guess its harder for hyung tho bc hes used to mothering u LOL same 4 yeinnie hyung_

_:( i feel extra bad_. After some pondering, he adds: _i think the meds r makin me emo_

_ooh, i could tell them that. theyll forgive you b4 you even apologize!!_

Dongyeol chuckles quietly. _LOL id appreciate that_

_im off to tell them then. quit sulking n come outside tho, someones gona need 2 shower sooner or later  
btw keep this note for the bad times. we fuss bc we care. xox_

Dongyeol hears scampering steps outside the door, and clutches the note tight against his chest.

 

 

He does end up apologizing himself, later, when the caffeine has worn off and he’s feeling too numb to care.

“It’s okay,” Yein tells him immediately, rushing to him to pat his head. “I’m sorry too, for treating you like a kid.”

“But I _am_ your kid,” Dongyeol jokes lightly, “mom.” He throws a little aegyo in for good measure. Yein laughs, and hits him with a dish rag.

Apologizing to Wooseok is way harder. It takes a lot of mumbling, a lot of looking-away-to-subtly-wipe-your-tears, a lot of regret and hurt feelings.

“I’m sorry too,” Wooseok says, suspiciously fixated on the living room window. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. You were right; it’s not up to me to decide how you should feel.”

“It’s okay.”

“And I’m sorry for cutting you off.” It sounds a bit rehearsed. Like Wooseok has been thinking of what to say, and how to say it, for a while now. “I promise I won’t do that from now on. But I’ll still be there for you, okay?”

Dongyeol swallows the knot in his throat, as big as ten plum blossoms. “Thanks, hyung.”

There’s some silence after that. Then, Wooseok lets out a bitter laugh. “You know, Yeol,” he says. “I hope I never find out who you like.”

Dongyeol feels his nape go cold. “Oh? That’s new,” he jokes. “Are you sure? Not curious?”

“I’m starting to fear what I might do to this person if I find out who they are.” Wooseok turns to stare at his own feet. Dongyeol can see his features clearly in the half-light. “When I think about how, while you’re going through this, this person is living their lives without a worry… I get so angry.” A chuckle. “I honestly want to fight this person face-to-face for not liking you back.”

Dongyeol doesn’t have a joke to follow that up with.

 

 

Turns out the new meds were making Dongyeol depressed. When Doctor Kwang states that, he even takes his glasses off, directing an Ultimate Super Ultra Mega Frown Of Concern to Dongyeol.

“This is bad,” he says.

“I suppose,” Dongyeol says back.

“I need you to understand the seriousness of your situation, Dongyeol-sshi,” the doctor says, and Dongyeol has war flashbacks to The Night Of All The Drama. “This could be the rest of your life, hoping from medicine to medicine. As an idol, I think you should be more zealous of your health.”

“But… I don’t have a choice, do I?” Dongyeol blinks innocently. Today, Changhyun and Sungjoon are tagging along with him, since noona couldn’t give him a ride, and Dongyeol can almost feel them exchanging glances behind him. “If I take the surgery, I could risk losing an important brain function and lose my career.”

Dongyeol believes he has made a good point – but Doctor Kwang is still frowning at him.

“Well…” he starts off, and here comes the bad feeling. “There’s always the other way…”

Dongyeol doesn’t want to hear it.

 

 

“The depression should pass once the old meds exit his system.” At the doorway, Changhyun is – rather reluctantly, from his tone – reporting the check-up to whoever asked. “For now, he might have some mood swings and the good old vomiting.”

Inside the quadruple room, Dongyeol is under his sheets, faking sleep. He had a godawful ride back home, feeling both nauseous and empty inside, so Changhyun had promptly put him to bed once they got to the dorm.

“Shouldn’t we move him to the double room?” He hears Minsoo suggest. “More privacy to him.”

“And for someone to take care of him,” Sooil adds.

“Yeol doesn’t need a caretaker,” Sungjoon cuts them off, and Dongyeol considers giving him a kiss next time he feels alive. “He needs us, but not on our creepy mom modes. Let’s give him some space too.”

Glorious. Dongyeol feels like he could vomit an entire bouquet for Sungjoon.

“Anyway, for now, let’s just let him sleep,” Changhyun adds, and Dongyeol nods to himself. “He had a hell of a day. I can’t imagine how tired he must be right now.”

Silence. Dongyeol wonders if they’ve gone away.

Then, Wooseok’s voice: “If I ever meet the person he likes,” he says, “I’m going to murder them.”

“Word,” someone, Minsoo?, agrees immediately, and Dongyeol can only scoff.

If only they knew.

He falls asleep almost immediately, and dreams of plum flowers and murder. Oddly enough, it’s not as bad of a dream as it sounds, but, when he wakes up, he feels like he just went through a ten-hour-long nightmare.

Nothing beats being a healthy person, really.

In the dizziness of his just-woken-up state, he can’t accurately tell if his ill disposition is caused by nausea or by anything else, so, when in doubt, he gets up and goes to the bathroom. He’s in the middle of doing so when he spots a big, weirdly-shaped lump on the floor.

He doesn’t have to get too close to tell that it’s Hwanhee, coiled around himself like a cat, apparently in the deepest of the sleeps.

“Hwanhee-yah,” Dongyeol calls softly, lest he alarm Changhyun and Sungjoon, who are… should be… are probably asleep in their beds. Getting off his own bed, Dongyeol crawls closer to the Hwanhee dumpling, and shakes his shoulder softly. “Hwanhee-yah, wake up. This isn’t a very comfortable way of sleeping.”

With a couple more shakes, Dongyeol manages to stir the dumpling awake. He blinks cutely in the darkness, clearly confused about his whereabouts and possibly even about which year he’s in right now. Dongyeol waits.

“What’s happening?” Hwanhee croaks out.

“You fell asleep on the floor, all bunched up like a potato,” Dongyeol whispers, grinning at him. “Since I’m an excellent friend, I woke you up.”

For a while, Hwanhee just stares at him. It’s like he’s trying to figure out how to solve a rubik cube with the fewest movements possible, but the rubik cube is Dongyeol’s head. Dongyeol stares back.

“Thanks,” he says finally, sitting up straight. “I’m gonna ask That question now.”

“Noooooo,” Dongyeol groans.

“Lee Dongyeol.” Hwanhee chases both of Dongyeol’s hands in the dark, clasping them between his own for increased dramatic effect. “Are you feeling better?”

It almost sounds like he’s proposing. “Yes, Lee Hwanhee,” Dongyeol answers with equal dramaticity. “I am, in fact, feeling much, much better.”

“That is good.” He lets go of Dongyeol’s hands. His warmth lingers. “Wanna go talk in the bathroom? Whispering is bad for your throat.”

Dongyeol wonders if they won’t end up alarming anyone. After all, every time Dongyeol has gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night for the past couple of months, it was to let out those pesky flowers of his. What if Minsoo wakes up this time too?

But well, he doesn’t have any better ideas. Besides, Hwanhee really needs to preserve his throat. “Sure.” And so they go.

They lock themselves in the bathroom, and Hwanhee sits down on top of the closed toilet. Dongyeol sits across him, on the edge of the bathtub.

“Should I tell you how dinner went, since you were asleep?” Hwanhee blurts out, apparently out of better things to say.

Dongyeol smiles wide. “Please do.”

So he does. He tells about Minsoo and Wooseok fought over the last portion of noodles, and Gyujin got annoyed and ordered pizza. Then he tells about how manager-noona caught them all in the act and scolded them for eating so many carbs, and now there’s about half a pizza in the fridge in case Dongyeol feels like binge-eating.

“Oooooh,” he exclaims, quietly applauding their manager. His brain is excited over the idea of stuffing his face with pizza. His stomach… not so much. “I’m gonna eat all of it for breakfast.”

“Good. But listen,” and he carries on talking.

Hwanhee ends up talking for almost half an hour nonstop, somehow tying the dinner stories up with the afternoon stories, which Dongyeol also missed because he was at the doctor. It’s just a bunch of random episodes which are certainly not as funny in narration as they were when they happened, but Dongyeol doesn’t miss a word.

Eventually, though, Hwanhee runs out of things to talk about, and the two of them become immersed in a slightly stiff silence. Dongyeol knows Hwanhee is avoiding any disease-related subjects, and he appreciates it… but he doesn’t need to be so careful.

“I changed my meds again today,” Dongyeol says. He watches the way Hwanhee avoids his eyes.

“So I heard.” 

Dongyeol shrugs. “It’s just a different collored pill. Apparently it’s less strong than the previous one, though, so it’s better for my stomach.” He kicks up his feet distractedly, now playing the role of avoiding Hwanhee’s eyes, since he has looked up to stare at him. “Doctor Kwang threw a fit though. Said I don’t take the situation seriously enough.”

Hwanhee scoffs. “What does he expect you to do? Break down crying?”

“Be worried, I guess. And try to cure myself,” he adds on an impulse, and immediately regrets it.

Hwanhee won’t stop staring at him.

A pause. Hwanhee sighs. “I wish I knew who’s the person you like,” he mutters, apparently half to himself. “So I could chase them down with Wooseok-hyung and Minsoo-hyung, and beat their ass into liking you back.”

Dongyeol laughs a little too loud at that. “Now there’s a coallision.”

“But of course. It’s annoying. If you told us…” Another pause, now a little longer. “I know you won’t tell me though. But, hey, dreaming is free, right?”

Ultimate Super Ultra Mega Bad Feeling. Dongyeol is usually too vulnerable around Hwanhee, tenfold if it’s just the two of them. Having this conversation with him right now, while the old meds are still messing up with his head, is _not_ a good idea.

“Say, Hwanhee,” Dongyeol’s mouth moves faster than his brain. “What if the person I liked was someone really weird?”

Big pause. When Dongyeol sneaks a peek at Hwanhee, he catches him blinking.

“As in… had weird hobbies?”

“As in, is someone you don’t expect.”

“Well, joke’s on you. I don’t know what I expect.” He opens his arms, as if challenging Dongyeol to a fight. 

He really can’t open his mouth anymore. It’s like, if he does, he’ll vomit the words accumulating in his stomach.

“What if it was one of us?”

But there he goes.

_Now_ Hwanhee looks distraugth. Dongyeol has that small victory in his favor. 

“One of UP10TION?” His voice sounds sharper than before. “Oh my God. Who is it?”

“Oh, so that’s your reaction? I asked _what if_ , idiot.” Dongyeol rolls his eyes, delivering a well-aimed kick on Hwanhee’s left shin. “Now I’m never gonna tell you.”

“I’m sorry.” Hwanhee apologizes sincerely, and that’s not what Dongyeol wanted. “I’m sorry, Yeol. I was caught by surprise.”

“You sure was.” Dongyeol stirs his tongue at him. “But honestly – don’t take me seriously, Lee Hwanhee, for God’s sake,” he adds as a disclaimer. “If it were anyone in our team… who do you think it would be?”

It’s just a joke. It’s just meant to be a joke.

But Hwanhee is sincerely thoughtful and distant when he says, “I… I don’t know.”

There might be a whole garden growing inside Dongyeol’s stomach.

 

 

 

For two weeks, the new new meds work well. No petal-vomiting. No observable side effects. Still a whole lot of flower poop.

And then, one fine day, as they’re in the van commuting from the company to the dorm, Dongyeol is hit with such intense nausea so soon that he wakes up with a jolt, as if someone had punched him on the stomach.

Wooseok, who’s sitting on his right, is immediately alarmed. “Yeol? What’s up?”

Hwanhee, who was sleeping on his left, wakes up immediately. “Mmfm?”

“What’s happening?” Jinwook asks from the passenger’s seat.

“I think Dongyeol is feeling sick,” Wooseok shouts back. “Dongyeol? Breathe slowly. Is it nausea?”

Dongyeol can only nod, eyes forced shut, a hand clamped over his mouth. He feels that, if he breathes in too hard, he’ll throw up, and he’s in a car full of his bandmates, and this is seriously not good.

“Should I stop the car?” Their manager’s husband, who’s driving, asks.

“Do you want us to stop the car?” Wooseok forwards the question, and, as much as Dongyeol wants to brave it out, he doesn’t think he can. So he nods. “Okay. Hyung, stop the car, please.”

Said hyung doesn’t need to be told twice, and the van comes to a screeching stop right in front of a gas station.

Thanks to a brief period of stomach instability and the brilliance of his own mind, Dongyeol has learned to carry empty plastic bags in his pockets wherever he goes. He can’t leave contagious material just lying around at places, after all. And today, that’s what saves him once he tumbles out of the car, falling to his knees while shoving his face into a bag to let it all out.

Except, nothing comes out.

Oh my God. Oh sweet baby Jesus God _there’s a horrifically huge branch stuck deep inside his throat_.

“Jinwook is fetching water,” Wooseok communicates as he kneels beside Dongyeol’s own hunched figure. “Try to breathe. You’re gonna be okay.”

Dongyeol wonders if Wooseok can see what’s going on inside the bag. He feels like he’s birthing a gremlin. Through his throat. God, this really sucks.

“Maybe tap his back?” Oh, Yein is up.

“He sounds like he’s choking, if that’s the case the tapping might help.” Gyujin can be really sagacious when he puts his mind into it.

“There, there.” Wooseok is doing it wrong, but it doesn’t do any harm, so he lets him be. Besides, he can’t exactly correct him at the moment. “Breathe in, breathe out. You’re gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay.”

At that magical moment, Dongyeol’s body spasms particularly badly, and he at last expels the vegetable monster that was doing him harm.

And to tie it up beautifully, here comes Jinwook with the water.

“Here.” His knees surely must hurt from kneeling so fast. Dongyeol takes the water with a voiceless ‘thanks’. “Better now?”

Dongyeol nods. He takes a small sip of that water, still feeling a little jumbled up inside, and cringes when his throat stings in contact with the liquid.

“Are the meds not working then?” Jinwook questions no one in particular.

“Maybe,” Dongyeol shrugs, taking a peek at the clearly evil branch that just tried to kill him.

But he falls silent when he sees the content of the bag in his hands. Because that’s _not_ a branch.

That’s a lily. A huge silver-colored – not white, silver-colored – lily flower.

Dongyeol has vomited white flowers before. White plum flowers, yes, and pink plum flowers and petals those hellish plum tree branches. Never a lily – much less a _silver-colored_ one. Dongyeol has never even _seen_ a silver lily before.

Summary: this is extremely weird.

“I,” he starts off, cutting whatever discussion his bandmates were having at the time. “I might have to go see Doctor Kwang.”

 

 

For the first time since his diagnose, Dongyeol enters the doctor’s room a little less than cheery, so not to say “sensing the impending and unavoidable doom”.

Of course, also for the first time ever, Doctor Kwang smiles at him.

“Well, what can I say,” he muses in a light voice as he examines Dongyeol’s lily, now neatly encased in an acryllic box. “Congratulations, Dongyeol-sshi. You’re cured.”

Dongyeol stares.

His manager also stares.

Both of them exchange a look before turning back to the doctor and staring a little more.

“Cured, you say,” manager-noona repeats feebly.

“Yep. This that you’re looking at,” he raises the boxed lily for emphasis, “is the virus. Now that it’s outside his body, Dongyeol-sshi is completely cured.”

Has all of this been a very long, very ellaborated hidden camera prank? Dongyeol does wonder.

“I’ll explain a little better,” Doctor Kwang seems to be overcome by sympathy at his patients’ disbelief. “This is, as it’s popularly called, hanahaki syndrome’s terminal stage. You see, the flowers regularly vomited by infected individuals seems to vary greatly – registered cases include roses, peonies, carnations, daisies, cherry blossoms, plum blossoms, sunflowers…”

Dongyeol is really glad he isn’t that sunflower person.

“... and even other variations of lilies – spider lillies in particular seem to be common,” Doctor Kwang finally concludes his exhaustive list of flowers. “But the final flower, the last to be expelled once the patient’s unrequited feelings are reciprocated, is always a silver-colored lily. They don’t exist in nature, so there’s no mistaking it.”

Dongyeol and manager-noona nod at the same time, in the same vacant, completely confused way.

Then, Dongyeol’s mind comes to a screeching halt.

“Wait,” but it’s manager-noona who talks. “You mean his feelings have been reciprocated?”

“Hm? Why, yes.” Doctor Kwang really is uncharacteristically cheery today. Maybe the lily is the cause of his good mood. He can’t stop toying with the box. “This is how the cure goes when it’s the easy way. The ‘cause’ reciprocates the sick individual’s unrequited love, and the virus is expelled in its final form.”

Manager-noona shoots Dongyeol a glance. Dongyeol glances back, at a utter loss of words.

“So it’s over,” she half-asks, half-affirms.

“Yes. No more need to medicine, and no more flower vomiting. Studies show that, once cured by the traditional method, the person becomes immune to the virus, so things are looking all the way up.” Then, turning to Dongyeol, he smiles a smile full of meaning. “That must be a goodbye, then. I wish you the best, Dongyeol-sshi.”

 _Where are the cameras_ , Dongyeol almost asks.

 

 

Considering the time lily-gate went down – it was quite late at night when it all started, in the van – it shouldn’t surprise Dongyeol that, by the time they reach the dorm, it’s almost sunrise. But it does. A little.

“Go straight to bed and try to get some sleep,” manager-noona instructs him, giving him an encouraging pat on the back. “Should I tell them when they wake up, or do you want to tell?”

Dongyeol’s head is still spinning from the appointment. He can’t make a reasonable decision as of now.

“I’ll tell,” he says on instinct.

“Okay,” she nods, too tired to question his choice. She then unlocks the apartment door for him, and ruffles his hair affectionately. “Good night, Xiao-yah. And be happy, okay?”

“Goodnight, noona.” Despite being dumbfounded, he can still smile honestly to her. And that seems to be enough, as she smiles back before going away.

Dongyeol all but tiptoes into the apartment, not fancying the idea of waking up anyone and having to answer to questions while he needs so many answerd himself. He attains success in locking the door silently, and crossing the living room silently, but he does almost yell when he almost collides with a body in the hallway.

“ _Fuck_ ,” the body hisses, and he could recognize that voice absolutely _anywhere_. “Who’s that?”

“UP10TION’s cute maknae Xiao,” he announces cheekily. 

“Yeollie?” A hand whacks Dongyeol on the nose. He whisper-complains. “You’re back? Wait, come to the bathroom, I can’t see you.”

“And whispering can hurt your throat,” Dongyeol recites.

“You got that right.”

 

 

So that’s how Dongyeol finds himself locked in the the bathroom alone with Hwanhee for the second time in a month. He swears to anyone who will hear that no, this is not a common occurence.

This time, it’s him who does most of the talking, at least at first. He explains Hwanhee what happened at the gas station, tells him about the silver lily, narrates the slightly creepy appointment with Doctor Kwang – but when the time to explain the silver lily’s meaning comes, he stutters and stutters and stops.

“So, basically,” Hwanhee is trying to put the pieces of Dongyeol’s narrative in place. Dongyeol feebly wishes, not for the first time, that Hwanhee could read minds. “The virus was a flower.”

“Yeah.”

“And you just threw it up, so you’re completely, totally, one hundred percent cured.”

“Seems so, yeah.”

Hwanhee frowns. Enough frowns, for God’s sake! “I don’t get it. So, in the end, you could actually get cured at any time if your body decided so?”

“Uh… no.” Dongyeol can’t help it; at times like this, when the embarrassment corners him so well and is so bone-crushing, he can’t help but laugh in a bit of a stupid manner. “You see… about the lily…”

He’s blushing. Hwanhee is staring. God have mercy on him.

“Doctor Kwang said that,” he tries blurting it out, but gets stuck halfway through. “Uh… he said that the silver lily comes—okay, this is really awkward.”

“?” Hwanhee doesn’t even say anything.

“He said that—that I vomited the lily because,” Dongyeol is discovering, in the worst possible manner, that some words are harder to spit out than fully grown plants. “Because… well, supposedly because my feelings are reciprocated now.”

And sure as hell it comes: dead fucking silence, echoing dully after Dongyeol’s words.

Loving someone really wasn’t supposed to be so hard.

“...oh,” Hwanhee says rather dumbly, after a dozen eons of silence.

“Yeah.” Dongyeol laughs. “Kinda awkward. I don’t know what to believe in right now.”

“What do you mean?” There he comes with the frowning.

“Well…” Shrug. “I… didn’t really discuss my feelings with the person I like, you know? So it’s kind of like. They supposedly like me now, but do they know it was them who I liked?” Double shrug. Smile. Telling signs that he’s at peak nervousness as of now. “This kind of thing.”

More silence. Nice. Dongyeol is starting to miss the flowers. They weren’t so bad, after you got used to them. (They were pretty bad, actually, but.)

And then, without a sign or a warning or anything of the sorts – Hwanhee jolts to his feet, eyes wide, staring straight at Dongyeol.

Dongyeol stares back, this time offering a frown himself.

“Dongyeol,” Hwanhee calls him in a quiet voice. “It’s. It’s not possible, right?”

Super Ultra Hyper Miracle Romantic Bad Feeling.

“What?” Dongyeol blinks.

Hwanhee steps forward. Once, twice. Crouches in front of him. All while carefully studying Dongyeol’s expression, eye-to-eye, now from a distance so close it almost burns.

He then slowly raises his hand, the index finger poiting at his face.

“This person you like,” he starts off, measuring every word with care. “Is it me?”

Silence.

Is he really cured? He feels like a whole plum tree is trying to sprout out from his chest right now.

“Yes,” he answers simply, not having any good reasons to lie. The sincerity of his words is almost sweet on his tongue, and he can’t help but offer Hwanhee a small, candid smile, even though his heart is pounding so hard he can barely hear himself. “It’s you. It has always been you.”

Hwanhee’s eyes are too beautiful from up close. 

‘Too beautiful’, yes, as in exceedingly beautiful, unnecessarily beautiful. To Dongyeol, Hwanhee has always been like a chocolate cake that’s too rich, or a refreshing beverage that’s too cold. He overwhelms Dongyeol’s senses, disarms him, but in such a delicious way that he can’t help but want more everyday, every hour, every minute.

Only the power of true love could make Dongyeol weave such poetry about such a loud, objectively annoying man. So he believes it.

Hwanhee is still staring at him, though, and Dongyeol, yet once again today, doesn’t know what to think or to say. It’s then when he spots the first tear.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Second tear. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” He loses count.

“It’s a bit obvious, isn’t it? I was scared I’d push you away.” Dongyeol can’t handle seeing Hwanhee cry, so it’s no surprise to him that he starts to cry as well. “And I would rather vomit flowers for my entire life than lose you. I think I made that pretty clear.”

“Way too clear!” Hwanhee wails, punching Dongyeol’s knee rather painfully. “Do you know how worried I was? I can’t stand seeing you suffer, Lee Dongyeol. I was so angry and so sad and in so much pain for you I didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Dongyeol doesn’t know what to say.

“And then—I started thinking, if only this person loved you back! And just, how could they not, anyway? You’re a total tool, yes, but you’re also cute and funny and you always look at the bright side of things and doing everything thinking of other people. How could someone not love you?” A sniff. Dongyeol’s heart shatters. “How could _I_ not love you?”

If Hwanhee doesn’t stop being such a crybaby, thinks Dongyeol, wiping his own tears, they’re gonna end up as two wailing messes and they’ll wake the hyungs up and get one hell of a scolding for it.

“It’s okay. You love me now, don’t you?” His fingers find themselves threading through Hwanhee’s hair. Ah. Heaven. Dongyeol might be crying, and his heart might be trying to escape the physical boundaries of his chest, but he is living the dream. “That’s what counts.”

“I don’t just love you, idiot. I love so much. Way too much.” Maybe it’s the touch that brings Hwanhee down from whatever bad trip he was having, but, after some seconds of caressing, he’s already able to raise his face to meet Dongyeol’s eyes. His tear-stained face is adorable.

“You what love me, then?”

“I… super love you?”

Dongyeol snickers. “Super Ultra Hyper Miracle Romantic love me?”

Sniff. Laugh. “Where do you even get that shit from?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dongyeol smiles wide, and looking at Hwanhee he muses, ah, there’s some people worth vomiting flowers for.

And when Hwanhee pulls him down to kiss his lips, Dongyeol realizes that, for Hwanhee, even pooping tree branches was worthwile, rather honestly.

 

 

Explaining everything to the rest of the group is rather the task. When they’re done, Dongyeol is afraid of what’s to come.

Sooil is frozen in place. Yein looks shell-shocked. Changhyun is staring at them as if they had just told the worst joke of the century. 

Sungjoon looks about to burst out laughing. This is hell.

But eventually, Hwanhee – who thankfully took over most of the talking – finishes narrating the maknaeline’s tale of love, tears, and plants, so they have no choice but to give the others time to react.

Wooseok looks quite pleased. So does Minsoo, who is nodding in a very ‘not bad’ fashion. Sungjoon doesn’t laugh, but he does snicker quite loudly. Sooil still hasn’t moved. 

Then, after much deliberation, Jinwook finally says something.

“Well,” is what he says. “This beats lobotomy.”

And, as Gyujin frowns one last frown for Dongyeol to add to his collection, everything ends well at last.


End file.
